A refined qPCR duplexing method for the molecular sex determination of sturgeon (Acipenser genus), providing a...

Previous molecular methods for sex determination of sturgeon of the Acipenser genus have been repeatedly validated for females, but have largely relied on suboptimal solutions to compensate for the lack of a confirmed control for males. By combining sturgeon cytochrome b (cyt b) gene amplification as a reference within existing qPCR techniques, this limitation is addressed through the demonstration of both the presence and confirmed absence of the female-specific AllWSex2 amplicon. Duplexing produces distinct melting curve profiles that enable simultaneous evaluation of both Acipenser confirmation and female identification targets. Incorporating the cyt b primer pair results in clearly distinguishable peak patterns for reliable sex determination, eliminating the need for additional probe detection, and making the approach more cost-effective, faster, and efficient than traditional multiplexing techniques. The method also highlights the importance of developing and appending existing assays to include said endogenous reference controls, such as the cyt b marker used here.